Establishing antibody baseline titres for the widal agglutination tests in the buea health district usingStool culture as standard
Njimbia Chebe Anthony
CaHReF 2016, Yaoundé Conges hall,23 – 26 August 2016 ,PL021
Baseline titres for anti O and H antibodies should be established in every community to avoid false positive results with the Widal test given that a proportion of healthy individuals has antibodies capable of reacting at variable titres. The objectives of this study were to determine baseline antibody titres for the Widal test and the antibiotic susceptibility pattern for Salmonellae in the Buea Health District. A cross sectional study was carried out involving 150 participants (100 patients and 50 controls). Blood and stool samples were collected from patients presenting with symptoms of typhoid at the Buea Regional Hospital. Widal tests were run for the blood samples while the stool samples were cultured for Salmonella species. Antiserotyping was performed on Salmonella pathogens isolated by culture to detect antigens. Antibiotic sensitivity test was performed on all culture-positive cases. Out of 100 patients, 21 were culture-positive for Salmonella. None of the control members was culture-positive. 14 cases had O antibody titre ≥1/160 and 7 had H antibody titre ≥1/320 with the Widal tube test. As concerns the slide test, 13 samples had O antibody titre ≥1/160 while 7 samples had titres ≥1/320 for the H antibody. The sensitivity of the tube test was 85% while that of the slide test was 66.66%. The highest titres in the control group were 1/80 for the O antibody and 1/160 for the H antibody. Fluoroquinolones had an average sensitivity rate of 76.86% while Amoxicillin, Chloramphenicol and Co-trimoxazole (the ACC) had 69.05%. The proportion of typhoid to paratyphoid fever was determined as 8:13. O and H antibodies titres of ≥1/160 and ≥1/320 respectively together with clinical features can be considered diagnostic for typhoid when using a single Widal test. The prevalence of typhoid was 21%.
Baseline, Titres, Typhoid, Widal, Stool, Culture, Buea